Did You Participate In Any Of Taiwan Mask's (TPE:2338) Incredible 345% Return?

Long term investing can be life changing when you buy and hold the truly great businesses. And highest quality companies can see their share prices grow by huge amounts. For example, the Taiwan Mask Corporation (TPE:2338) share price is up a whopping 302% in the last half decade, a handsome return for long term holders. And this is just one example of the epic gains achieved by some long term investors. Also pleasing for shareholders was the 29% gain in the last three months. But this could be related to the strong market, which is up 19% in the last three months.

See our latest analysis for Taiwan Mask

While markets are a powerful pricing mechanism, share prices reflect investor sentiment, not just underlying business performance. One imperfect but simple way to consider how the market perception of a company has shifted is to compare the change in the earnings per share (EPS) with the share price movement.

During the five years of share price growth, Taiwan Mask moved from a loss to profitability. Sometimes, the start of profitability is a major inflection point that can signal fast earnings growth to come, which in turn justifies very strong share price gains.

The image below shows how EPS has tracked over time (if you click on the image you can see greater detail).

This free interactive report on Taiwan Mask's earnings, revenue and cash flow is a great place to start, if you want to investigate the stock further.

What About Dividends?

It is important to consider the total shareholder return, as well as the share price return, for any given stock. The TSR incorporates the value of any spin-offs or discounted capital raisings, along with any dividends, based on the assumption that the dividends are reinvested. Arguably, the TSR gives a more comprehensive picture of the return generated by a stock. As it happens, Taiwan Mask's TSR for the last 5 years was 345%, which exceeds the share price return mentioned earlier. This is largely a result of its dividend payments!

A Different Perspective

Taiwan Mask shareholders gained a total return of 29% during the year. But that return falls short of the market. It's probably a good sign that the company has an even better long term track record, having provided shareholders with an annual TSR of 35% over five years. Maybe the share price is just taking a breather while the business executes on its growth strategy. I find it very interesting to look at share price over the long term as a proxy for business performance. But to truly gain insight, we need to consider other information, too. Even so, be aware that Taiwan Mask is showing 4 warning signs in our investment analysis , and 2 of those are potentially serious...

If you like to buy stocks alongside management, then you might just love this free list of companies. (Hint: insiders have been buying them).

Please note, the market returns quoted in this article reflect the market weighted average returns of stocks that currently trade on TW exchanges.

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This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.
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